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Oracle Delivers Release 2 of 10g Database

As expected, database maker Oracle this week announced it has delivered Oracle 10g Release 2, a kicker to the original 10g database that was launched in February 2004. Oracle 10g is itself an improved version of the Oracle 9i database and the Real Application Clusters (RAC) extensions that Oracle co-developed with Compaq a number of years ago. Oracle 9i RAC implemented the first practical and usable clustering technology for general purpose applications, and Oracle 10g is a so-called grid implementation of this software, and the difference between cluster and grid is largely a marketing one, not a technology one. Oracle has sold over 40,000 licenses of Oracle 10g to over 15,000 customers in the past 17 months.

With Oracle 10g Release 2, the company is making performance tweaks to make clustered databases run more smoothly and efficiently, and is boosting the scalability of the database to over 100 server nodes in a single database image. The software also has better load balancing across the cluster, and Oracle has published open up and API in the Clusterware feature of the 10g database (this is the secret sauce that Oracle licensed from Compaq's TruCluster extensions to its Tru64 Unix to create Oracle 9i RAC) that will allow companies to better hook 10g databases into their high availability clustering and management software. The 10g Release 2 database also has beefed up encryption technologies, since everyone is paranoid about losing archive tapes or having data stolen from their networks these days. Oracle 10g Release 2 is shipping initially on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3, but will be available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4, Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (presumably versions 8 and 9), IBM AIX, Sun Microsystems Solaris, Hewlett-Packard HP-UX, and Microsoft Windows over the next 30 to 90 days.

Judge Pushes Out SCO-IBM Trial Date

Here we go again. Those of us hoping for some sort of closure in the lawsuit between SCO Group and IBM are going to have to wait a little bit longer. The trial, which was set to begin on November 1, has been moved out to February 26, 2007, to give IBM more time to prepare for its chairman and CEO, Sam Palmisano, to prepare for his deposition. IBM had filed a motion to try to wiggle out of having Palmisano be deposed for the case, which is standard operating procedure in these cases. IBM was trying to argue that Palmisano does not have any special knowledge that might relate to the case, but considering he was the executive who in December 1999 spearheaded IBM's campaign to help further commercialize Linux, this is likely not the case.

While granting SCO's motion to have Palmisano deposed for four hours, U.S. District Court Judge Dale Kimball denied SCO's motion to file an amended complaint--which would have been its third such amendment. SCO filed its $3 billion lawsuit against IBM in March 2003, alleging that IBM has dumped Unix code protected under its copyrights and used intellectual property owned by SCO to help bolster Linux. In January 2004, SCO filed a different lawsuit against Novell, which has alleged that Novell, not SCO, owns the copyrights to Unix, and therefore SCO has no grounds on which to sue IBM. Kimball has denied Novell's second motion to dismiss this case. It is unclear when the SCO-Novell case will come to trial; the pending Red Hat-SCO lawsuit will not come to trial (or be settled) until these two cases are done.

HP, Sun Add Smaller High-End Enterprise Arrays

Server makers Hewlett-Packard and Sun Microsystems have both this week introduced scaled-down versions of the TagmaStore disk arrays they OEM from Hitachi.

The HP StorageWorks XP10000 and the Sun StorEdge 9985 are similar machines, which stands to reason since they are both based on Hitachi's Network Storage Controller 55. This storage array has all the same virtualization features of the larger TagmaStore array, but only scales up to 240 disk drives and only a maximum of 32 processors in the controller. Using 300 GB disks, the new Hitachi array machine tops out at 69 TB, compared to the 332 TB that the TagmaStore array can hold. The smaller unit can have 48 host ports, compared to 192 in the bigger box. Hitachi says that an entry NSC55 array with 5TB of disk and no virtualization software costs around $150,000, which about half the entry price point of the TagmaStore arrays.

Both the TagmaStore and NSC55 arrays support various Unix, Linux, Windows, mainframe, and other platforms, even when sold on an OEM basis by HP and Sun. Both companies are adding their own software goodies to the boxes to tie them more closely to their own platforms.

IBM Chills Out Server Racks with Heat Exchanger

IBM this week announced a heat exchanger that uses water-cooling technology that it hopes will give it an edge over its rivals in selling the hottest server technologies.

The "Cool Blue" eServer Heat Exchanger took three years to develop. It consists of back door for IBM's 42U enterprise server racks that hooks into existing water-based air-conditioning systems--commonly known as computer room air conditioning, or CRAC, and a more appropriate acronym could not be found since data centers are increasingly addicted to air conditioning--to suck heat out of the back of the rack and pump it into the water supply.

Tim Dougherty, director of BladeCenter marketing at IBM, says that the heat exchanger can remove up to 50,000 BTUs of heat out of a rack, which amounts to 55 percent of the heat generated by a full rack of servers. The other 45 percent of the heat still gets dissipated into the data center and must be dealt with by those CRAC units. However, the heat exchanger will allow customers to cope with hot spots in the data center or to more densely pack servers in a rack without creating a hot spot. While server makers often talk up the density of their machines, in many cases--particularly with machines with lots of peripherals and the fastest processors installed--customers can only half-populate their racks in real world settings. So removing half of the heat through a water-based chiller will allow many customers to get the densities they bought into when they acquired their servers. IBM is particularly interested in peddling the chiller with its eServer 1350 rack-mounted clusters.

The Cool Blue chiller costs $4,299, and it only snaps on IBM's racks. It can be used to cool xSeries, pSeries, and iSeries servers. Dougherty says that it is designed to be installed by customers, but if customers want help, installation services will cost from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars, depending on the geography and the complexity of the data center.

Java Coders Like Open Source Software

Other survey results, which were compiled by Evans Data, show Microsoft's .NET has established a slight lead over Java in the overall development space, but that situation reverses in the enterprise space, with 60 percent of the development taking place in Java compared to 56 percent in .NET.

Enterprise Management Software Market Grows 11.4 Percent to $6.2 Billion

The enterprise management software market, where the customers are a Who's Who of corporate high rollers, turned in a winning parlay ticket of double digit growth in 2004, according to an accounting of license revenue figures recently completed by Gartner. The analyst firm concluded the market grew 11.4 percent to $6.2 billion.

The top vendor in this field--for the fourth consecutive year--was IBM, which registered 7.5 percent growth and reached $2 billion in revenue. Gartner also ranked IBM as the leader across enterprise management market categories including availability and performance management, configuration management, database management, job scheduling, and network management, plus a general category that includes print management. IBM covers this market with its Tivoli software suite of products.

Oracle Numbers On the Up Despite PeopleSoft Merger Costs

Based on its fourth quarter financial numbers, it appears Oracle's new diet of PeopleSoft customers has helped add muscle to the IT heavyweight. In the first full quarter after the PeopleSoft acquisition, Oracle reported GAAP total software revenues were up 24 percent to $3.12 billion while non-GAAP total software revenues were up 31 percent to $3.30 billion. GAAP database and middleware new license revenues were up 16 percent to $1.26 billion for the quarter, while GAAP applications new license revenues were up 52 percent to $350 million. GAAP services revenues were up 35 percent to $755 million.

GAAP earnings per share in fiscal 2005 Q4 were up 4 percent to $0.20, and non-GAAP earnings per share were up 36 percent to $0.26. GAAP net income for the quarter was up 3 percent to $1.02 billion, while non-GAAP net income grew 35 percent to $1.36 billion. GAAP revenues were up 26 percent to $3.88 billion while non-GAAP revenues were up 32 percent to $4.06 billion for the quarter.

Oracle CEO, Larry Ellison boasted that his company's strong growth backs up the latest Gartner, IDC, and Morgan Stanley database surveys that show Oracle is increasing database market share while IBM's DB2 database is in decline.

For the fiscal year 2005, Oracle's GAAP earnings per share increased 10 percent to $0.55, and non-GAAP earnings per share increased 31 percent to $0.68. GAAP net income was up 8 percent to $ 2.9 billion, while non-GAAP net income grew 29 percent to $3.5 billion. GAAP revenue was up 16 percent to $11.8 billion, while non-GAAP revenue was up 19 percent to $12.1 billion.

Fiscal year 2005 GAAP software revenues were up 17 percent to $9.4 billion while non-GAAP software revenues were up 21 percent to $9.7 billion. GAAP database and middleware new license sales were up 13 percent to $3.3 billion, and GAAP applications new license revenues were up 28 percent to $785 million. GAAP service revenues were up 14 percent to $2.4 billion.